


The Speed of Dark

by havisham



Category: The Iliad - Homer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Space, Clones, Gen, M/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 01:28:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13136286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: Hector and Odysseus are forced to work together due to the whim of the gods - IN SPACE!





	The Speed of Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lferion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/gifts).



> This was a lot of fun to write -- thanks for such an inspiring prompt!

Hector snapped off the communicator and tossed it onto his sleeping pad, where it lay, dull and lifeless. Taking Paris’ useless commands, day after day, was enough for him to throw himself into the nearest black hole, but of course he wouldn’t, not when he was responsible for a hundred other souls on board of the _Astyanax._

The communicator began to beep anxiously, as it always did when he took it off. Soon, there would be a wellness check from the ship computer, checking his vitals, making sure he hadn’t done anything foolish. With a sigh, he put it on again. It was still warm from his body. How much did he hate the weight of it against his ear?

(So much.) 

“Athena,” he said aloud, “how long have we been fighting the Achaeans?” 

“Do you really want to know, Hector?” Athena asked him, sounding faintly amused. 

“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.” 

“It has been ten solar years, give or take,” was Athena’s answer. There had been something of a controversy when the computer system for the _Astyanax_ was revealed to be running under the Athena line. The god-powered sentient ships that the Trojans commanded usually were in the Apollo or Artemis lines, and occasional vicious little attack ships from Aphrodite. Paris had gotten his start on those, and it showed. 

The Athena line was available on both sides; however, the _Astyanax_ was the only one on the Trojan frontlines at the moment. They demanded a clever engineer and a captain with a will of iron as well as a great deal of luck just getting them off the ground. 

Hector did not consider himself a particularly lucky individual, even when it came to clones. He was at least five generations away from the original Hector, General Priam’s son and Paris’ brother, but that Hector had been killed in the first flush of fighting, and the whole thing repeated. That was the problem with all Hectors, after all -- noble to a fault, always quick to resort to the sacrifice play, and doomed from the start. 

Hector (or H-537, as was his factory designation) had lasted a lot longer than most Hectors did -- Andromache said that it was because he’d received more of Hecuba’s practicality than most Hectors did, though that observation had no scientific basis -- but even so, he could tell his time was coming due. So it was without much surprise, but with a sense of inevitability, that he heard the alarms sound throughout the ship. 

The _Astyanax_ was under attack and as Hector raced towards the brig, he couldn’t help but wonder if his time was finally up. Andromache was already there, snapping out commands as a good second-in-command would do, and they exchanged a brief nod before Hector took over. 

They were being attacked by Achilles --

“Wait, isn’t he dead?” Hector asked Andromache, who shrugged. He could’ve sworn they’d annihilated him and his ship not so long ago. That had earned him a special commendation from General Priam, for all good it did him now. 

“Perhaps they’ve cloned him?” 

“Thetis wouldn’t let anyone clone her precious boy,” Hector said, exasperated. “He’s copyrighted down to his heels.” 

\-- And losing. Hector watched as their firepower began to dwindle and their ship took more and more hits. “Andromache,” he said, “begin the evacuation orders.” 

She looked at him. “Are you sure? This is our --” 

“I’m sure,” he said. “They’ll send out another Hector, don’t worry about that. But not everyone here can live as many times as I can.” 

Andromache made a face. “I wasn’t worried about _that_ , you know. I suppose you’ll want to go down with the ship?” 

“You know me too well,” Hector said with a smile. 

“I wish I could be surprised.” They were rocked from their heels with another blow and the emergency lights came on, giving everything a bloody tinge. The evacuation took all of twenty minutes and once launched (and with a final goodbye to Andromache, filled with a dozen silent things that neither of them could ever say -- perhaps Andromache had been right when she had told him that their combined emotional constipation would be the death of them) Hector found himself alone on the brig, watching Achilles’ ship preparing to board his. 

“Athena,” he said as the computer system hummed against his ear. “What are my chances of survival if I were to command you to launch the final protocol?” 

“Almost as as likely the Trojans winning this war,” said Athena. “That is to say, not very high.” 

“Just checking. Then, proceed. Also, what do you mean we won’t win the war?” 

“Ah, dear Hector,” Athena said. “I really am quite fond of you, despite everything.” 

It was then that everything bled white and Hector sighed. 

Here he went again. 

*

… Or not. 

Hector woke up in what seemed like a cell that had been done up to look like a stateroom, but badly, like the decorators had run out of credits halfway through. He sat up and saw that someone had welded a metal bracelet on his wrist. Further investigation proved that it was impossible to remove and a severe shock went through him when he tried. 

For the first time that day, Hector felt annoyed enough to swear. “Fuck this. I’m supposed to be _dead_.” 

“Chin up. It’ll happen without you wanting it, sooner or later.” 

Hector’s head snapped up and he took a sharp breath. In front of him was the second-to-last person he wanted to see (the first was surely Achilles, who’d killed him in every life he could remember and probably in the ones he couldn’t) -- Odysseus, the brains behind the Achaean forces, a devilishly clever bastard and a deeply annoying person besides. 

They’d met once at a gala thrown by Helen in an effort to broker peace. Instead of peace, both sides had contracted a wicked strain of food poisoning and Hector had been tricked by Odysseus into losing the best washstall on the _Sparta_ \-- which was, still, of course shockingly spartan -- but at least there had been water. The next place Hector had tried wasn’t nearly as well-provided for.

Odysseus brightened considerably as he recognized Hector. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Hector! Athena is in a good mood, it seems. She usually sends much worse playmates -- er, specimens than you.” 

“Excuse me? What are you talking about?” 

“Oh? What? Never mind,” Odysseus said with forced laugh. “Forget I said anything.” 

“You said specimen. Am I to be a science experiment to you, you Achaean reprobate? Athena might support you blindly, but I won’t --” 

“You’re taking it too seriously -- honestly, Hector, the war’s over, you should learn to take easy for a change --” 

“What do you mean, it’s over?” Hector leapt up and stalked toward Odysseus, who, to his credit, didn’t flinch away. Instead he took out a data screen and offered it to Hector. In a matter of seconds, he saw scenes of the Troy homeworld overrun with Achaean soldiers, Paris and Priam dead and something that looked remarkably like a _horse_ crash landed in the middle of the Trojan Memorial Hall of Heroes (where, perhaps not uncoincidentally, the original Hector’s body rested.) 

He looked up and stared at Odysseus. “This was _your_ work, wasn’t it?”

“... Ah. Why do you say that?” 

“Achilles wouldn’t have wanted the praise.” 

“Oh -- oh, you didn’t know Achilles _at all_ , do you? He needed praise, constantly. That was half the reason we kept Patroclus around, you know!” 

“‘Needed’ praise? You mean he’s dead?” 

“Oh, yes, killed by Paris, if you can believe it.” 

“I can’t,” Hector said flatly. Paris? His useless, sort-of brother Paris doing something as as incredible as killing Achilles? It didn’t make any sense at all. 

“Well, now you know everything,” Odysseus said quickly. “You’re all caught up in the current state of affairs and nothing at all is the matter.” 

“Wait! It doesn’t explain why you have me or what I’m doing here.” 

“That’s not very important --” 

“I can explain it,” said Athena, who had clearly been waiting to speak. Hector cocked his head up to hear her. She sounded much more excited than usual and Odysseus looked uncharacteristically nervous, which immediately put Hector on his guard. 

“You see, everyone who travels with Odysseus is doomed to die --” 

“That’s debatable, highly debatable, there’s no _doom_ , pe se, nothing like that --” 

“Fatality is nearly 100%, so I thought, this go-around, why not let Odysseus have as a traveling companion someone who is, for all intents and purposes, already dead?” 

Odysseus chuckled a little. “Olympians really are too, too blunt, aren’t they? Learn some subtlety, why don’t you?” 

“I see,” Hector said, even though he really didn’t. “This is just another way that Athena grossly favors Odysseus over everyone else. Is that right?” 

“People make too much of that,” Odysseus protested. “Sure, Athena likes me, but you know Poseidon really doesn’t? And guess who has the most power to see me home? Athena doesn’t rule over the deep dark space, after all. Poseidon does.” 

“Poseidon can eat shit,” Athena said calmly. “He doesn’t get to say how my favored ones die.” 

“This is the kind of stuff that get blamed on me,” Odysseus said, a thread of whining in his voice. “Hector, you heard her, right? That wasn’t me, right?” 

It was a lot to process. Hector suspected that he wouldn’t be able to handle the truth of it head-on at all, so he had to approach it from the sides. He was a prisoner of Odysseus, who seemed desperately lonely for -- well, any form of human company. Perhaps Athena was right that everyone traveling with him was doomed to die. That would certainly explain some of the clinginess, some of the skittish aspects of Odysseus’ conduct. It wasn’t the conduct of a man who was afraid of death, but rather one who was afraid to be left alone. 

Hector pondered that, in the coming weeks and months as they journeyed farther and farther away from the ruins of Troy and towards what happened to Odysseus’ final destination. 

Clones could be, effectively, immortal. That was, if they were not killed -- and they usually were killed, thus the need for more clones -- they could be relied on to keep going, upgrading new parts as they became available, serving in their roles until they became redundant. With the destruction of Troy, Hector knew himself to be redundant. 

Hector had loved Troy -- he could not have helped loving Troy, it was as bred into him as the color of his eyes, the texture of his hair, the breadth of his shoulders -- but now, without Troy, he had no idea what to do. He supposed he could take vengeance on those who had destroyed it, Odysseus chief among them, but that wouldn’t bring Troy back, wouldn’t make the dead live again.

He wondered what had become of Andromache. Odysseus, when he asked him, looked confused -- he had no idea what the fate of a single person from the enemy side was to be, and didn’t particularly care. Hector knew that if she was still living, Andromache would be able to take care of herself, but still, he wished he could help her. 

Odysseus’ ship was built for stealth rather than size -- his obvious hope was to get through the territory of his enemies (and Odysseus had plenty of enemies, even among those who were, on paper, his allies) as quickly as possible, with a minimum of fuss and notice. Well, that was the intent, and if Odysseus was anyone but Odysseus, that might have worked. 

But Odysseus seemed to have a special knack for stopping at some port or station somewhere and getting quickly embroiled in some local controversy or another, which he, in his overwhelming cleverness, thought he could solve. It was on the pleasure-ship of the space-witch Circe that Hector found himself in a position to escape. Odysseus had lost his mind almost, having pledged to help Circe with her genetic experiments on her army of pig-men. 

In a way, it was perfect. Odysseus could be happy working with Circe, Circe would be happy picking Odysseus’ brain, and Hector could escape when no one was watching. Which was why his decision to grab Odysseus and run made little sense -- either to himself, or to anyone else. 

“... Those pig-men gave me nightmares,” Hector said aloud, as they were escaping. Odysseus, whose face had lost that clouded, dazed expression as soon as he’d left Circe’s power, seemed to consider this. 

“If it was me, I’d leave you there and go off on my own,” he said, picking off bits of feathers and fur from his hair and beard. In the house of Circe, he hadn’t bothered to shave or bathe and as a consequence had a great deal of things stuck in both. 

“Well, luckily, I’m not you,” Hector snapped back. 

“Obviously, but, say, Hector, aren’t you a little … Were you jealous of me and Circe? I’m flattered, you know…” 

“I would rather die than feel any kind of emotion towards you,” Hector said coldly. “Especially _that_.” 

“ _That_ \-- what? What’s that?” 

“Don’t play dumb.” 

“That’s impossible for me, I’m very intelligent.” 

“So you say,” Hector said, concentrating on piloting and ignoring Odysseus who was inching closer to him, practically twitching with curiosity. 

“If either of you are interested,” Athena said over their heads, “Circe has implanted several devices on the ship that are set to go off once we’re outside the orbit of her star system, which we now are. We have five minutes before total system collapse.” 

“Athena, dear,” Odysseus said, sounding pained. “Why didn’t you tell us this sooner?” 

“You seemed absorbed in other things. I didn’t want to interrupt.” 

“You didn’t want interrupt us _dying_?” Hector said, disbelieving. 

“Oh, but Odysseus likes a challenge,” Athena said. “You have three minutes.” 

Three desperate minutes of trying to find Circe’s device and deactivate it resulted in Athena taking them through a wormhole and then Odysseus crash-landing their ship on what seemed like a deserted beach. 

“I’m only alive to entertain her, you know,” Odysseus said, as he crawled out of the wreckage. 

Hector flopped against the cinnamon-colored sand, spraying out the granules that had filled his mouth. Odysseus was smirking at him. Hector stood up and glared. “Shut up.” 

“I thought you were supposed to be the perfect gentleman? What’s with this hostility?” 

“My entire life is -- _over_ \-- because of you. I’m sorry if I’m not as polite as I could be.” 

“Wait a minute,” Odysseus protested. “Your entire life was _over_ before I had anything to do with you. You can’t blame me for that.” 

“Then you should have let me stay dead!” Hector said, slamming his fist against the sand. The air around them seemed to shimmer for a moment and there was a distant roar.

“Now’s not really the time for histrionics,” Odysseus said, which was annoying, but true as it went. Soon enough they were embroiled in an enhausting romp that ended with Hector being almost devoured, an extremely angry one-eyed giant, and Odysseus demonstrating his damned arrogance once again. 

Once they had returned to the ship and Athena had informed them that they were ready to leave. After that, Hector devoted most of his time to finding the booby-traps left by Circe. If he worked, he figured he didn’t have to think about his circumstances. It was a brilliant plan, with one notable exception: the existence of Odysseus. 

Odysseus found him in a utility tunnel over the engine room, disengaging one final booby-trap courtesy of Circe. He hovered over Hector for a moment, not saying anything but clearly wanting to. Hector ignored him. 

Finally, he couldn't stand it. “You don't have to stay,” Odysseus said. 

“Excuse me?” 

“I'm not holding you hostage. Go back to Troy (what's left of it) and try to find your family. I won't stop you. Whatever Athena says, I do mind having everyone around me die. We can drop you off at the next station, and I'll be off to Ithaca.” 

“I have nowhere to go,” Hector said, swinging down to the floor. He huffed impatiently. “I'm only a clone of Hector, you know. It's not as if anyone is actually waiting for me to come back and set things to right.” 

Andromache, maybe -- but no, she knew that their time was at an end. They had accepted that as a part of working together, of building a ship together. 

“... Ah. Well, worth a try, anyway.” 

The bracelet fell from Hector’s wrist.

Odysseus brightened. “Do you want to go to Ithaca?” 

“Of course I don't want to go to Ithaca,” Hector said. “What's there in Ithaca?” 

“Hey, don't insult my home, it has lots of nice places and some great people… My boyhood home’s there and everything I own… My family’s there, such as they are.” 

“You miss them?” 

“I do,” Odysseus replied seriously. “I’d never stop trying to go back there. No matter what happens.” 

“Well, I'll help you get back,” Hector said. “The sooner you get back, the better, isn't that right? The universe doesn't need you bouncing around here and there, making trouble for everyone.” 

“Ha, that's where you're wrong, Hector. The universe desperately needs my kind of trouble.” 

“If you say so,” Hector said. He felt happier now than he had for a long time. It wasn't as if -- Zeus forbid -- he'd come to like Odysseus or anything like that, although it was true that there was something to be said for his irrepressible spirit -- but it was because for the first time since the war, Hector had a mission again. Return Odysseus to Ithaca. After that, who knew? He wouldn't plan that far ahead. 

“I'm glad you made up, finally,” Athena said cheerfully. “because there's something I need you two do in Phaeacia --” 

“I think I understand now why Athena favors you,” Hector told Odysseus as they made their way to the brig. “You’re just going around and making life difficult for people, aren’t you?” 

“It’s the whim of the gods,” Odysseus said airly. “I’d advise you not to take it too seriously, Hector. That’s where you always go wrong, you know.” 

“The hell I do,” Hector said, and smiled. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta!


End file.
